I stopped getting notifications for Listserv posts a while ago. Maybe AARST is not in favor of public discussions among radon professionals? I sent you some info via message on this site. If you do not get it, email me at michelleatfestaradondotcom

What time is your session? Sunday sessions are extra pay so can people audit (sit in without credit)? Do you have post-mitigation test data, from right after mitigation but also months and years after? thanks

There are more deadlines for public review comments coming up, for mitigation standards-SF, LB, MF all together: MONDAY APRIL 18 snd APRIL 25. I know it seems pointless to submit comments, but there is a process to follow.

Bill, thank you for the correction that CARST is not a part of AARST. I got confused among all the AARST-related entities. But for a time at least, C-NRPP was run by AARST-NRPP:

From Fall 2012 AARST Radon Reporter:
The National Radon Proficiency
Program (NRPP) opened a Canadian
version of the credentialing program
(C-NRPP).

From the 2013 AARST Radon Reporter:
October 1, 2012, the NRPP certification program became
the AARST - National Radon Proficiency Program (NRPP)
in the United States, and the Canadian National Radon
Proficiency Program (C-NRPP) in Canada, both administrated
by AARST in its Fletcher Offices in North Carolina.

It also lists Pam as C-NRPP coordinator and AARST staff; she coordinates the Canada radon symposium currently.
C-NRPP Exam Coordinator
Pam Warkentin

From the Winter 2014 AARST Radon Reporter
Since 1986, AARST, the American Association of Radon Scientists
and Technologists, Inc., has represented radon professionals,
scientists and risk reduction advocates in the United States,
Canada, and all around the world.

AARST and CARST had a close relationship in the past. I found this history of CARST, and I thought it was interesting so here it is from its website archive:

September 2008
• Bob Wood and Pam Warkentin met with William Angell and the AARST board at the Las Vegas AARST conference regarding initiating a Canadian chapter of AARST.
• AARST were very supportive and interested in helping us proceed.
• We drew up a statement of intent at that time to start the process.
• Within a year, other Canadian members of AARST were starting to gain interest in the idea.

2009 - 2010
• We worked with the AARST chapter co-ordinator Nicole Chazaud and she provided us with support materials to initiate a chapter.
• We also approached the Canadian Radiation Protection Association (CRPA) and began a discussion to work together with them. CRPA set up a working group and decided that they would like to have a relationship with us, but we would require our own organization.
• We began discussions with a lawyer at the time and realized that in order to proceed as a Canadian non-profit corporation, we would need to start our own organization rather than be a chapter of AARST.

May 2011
• CRPA hosted a conference in Ottawa in May 2011 and offered us space to host a meeting to initiate our organization.
• We contacted all Canadian members of AARST to advise them of the meeting and 22 members met and became founding members of a new organization called: Canadian Association of Radon Scientists and Technologists (CARST).
• At that time we agreed on by-laws and set up a board of directors to proceed with incorporation.

April 2012 - The 1st Annual CARST Conference
• 45 people attended the conference.
• The agenda included presentations from individuals across the country on a variety of radon specific work.
• Health Canada presented an update on their cross country survey.
• NEHA-NRPP presented information on a new Canadian certification (C-NRPP) that they had just launched (April 1, 2012) to provide a Canadian version of the current American certification process.
• We also hosted a transitional exam which provided 31 certified professionals an opportunity to "Canadianize" their certification.

It is nice that our Canadian friends who are also CARST board members are taking the time to advocate for the ANSI-AARST standards. Does everyone know CARST is part of US main AARST? https://carst.ca/BoardofDirectors?&tab=2

I have been on the MIT committee for nearly 2.5 years. I am writing this not as a committee member but as someone involved in this industry since 1996. I came to the conclusion that much of the complexity in the ANSI-AARST SGM-SF 2017/2020 standard for single family home “soil gas” mitigation is due to the additional requirements for Vapor Intrusion (VI) work that are not needed for radon. The potential harmonization of SF with MF and LB into one standard would also raise the level of the entire standard.
For those interested in how we got here, I have done a bit of research. This was put into motion many years ago –AARST added Vapor Intrusion to its repertoire around 2014, started pursuing ISO 17024 around 2015, added QA requirements in 2014, OM&M in 2015. These things were mentioned in various issues of the Radon Reporter.

There was a committee formed sometime around 2014 to make a new single family home radon mitigation standard as an ANSI-AARST standard. There were 33 people, plus Spruce co-owner Dave Kapturowski as chair, on the committee writing SGM-SF-2017. The breakdown of affiliations has always troubled me. There were 7 HUD people (and no disrespect to them, but I doubt any had hands-on radon mitigation experience). There were 15 government people total, including HUD, EPA and state radon reps. And 10 people specifically as radon reps, but when you take off government people, only 7 of the 33 total were designated to protect radon’s interests.

But also, this committee had 16 VI representatives (or 14 – 2 EPA members were not specified VI or Rn but were among the VI people). Anyone would expect a higher level than minimum requirements, based on the number of both government and VI people. This is why the standard has so many new and cumbersome requirements – desirable and needed for VI but not for radon.

I do acknowledge the time and efforts made by people who are AARST volunteers, on the board and on the committees as well as for NRPP. This work requires a significant amount of time and most people are highly invested in their work. Many have been involved with AARST in various positions for decades, and it is understandable that they would be offended to have their work product criticized.

But public comments on standards is by its nature a form of criticism of the standards. When SGM-SF-2017 was being written and issued, it was required to be used nowhere, and got little attention. But the ANSI-AARST standards now have the force of law and are enforced with fines and threats of losing one's license in some states, and the same is planned for all states. So everyone should be reviewing each word carefully and not be inhibited from making comments/objections/suggestions, and AARST should be receptive towards making changes to requirements that people who are using the standard in the real world have found to be problematic.

Maybe this is a great example of why there should be term limits/time limits on people's service, and limits on the number of employees or volunteers from each company being involved in AARST. It is unfair that only very few companies bear the burden of AARST work, and on the other hand, unfair that only a few are making the decisions and setting the direction for the entire radon industry. And we, the radon community, have no idea how many people are involved on all the various committees, since only the chairs are listed, but I think some companies are sacrificing significant manhours to AARST while others are left out. I think making this transparent, with all committee meeting minutes published, would help us truly appreciate the work of AARST.

Hopefully Dallas can commit to making these administrative changes, and that the AARST, NRPP and the Standards Consortium will be a partner with radon professionals instead of an adversary that uses policies and procedures to ignore valid complaints and concerns.

I have been on the MIT committee for nearly 2.5 years. I am writing this not as a committee member but as someone involved in this industry since 1996. I came to the conclusion that much of the complexity in the ANSI-AARST SGM-SF 2017/2020 standard for single family home “soil gas” mitigation is due to the additional requirements for Vapor Intrusion (VI) work that are not needed for radon. The potential harmonization of SF with MF and LB into one standard would also raise the level of the entire standard.

For those interested in how we got here, I have done a bit of research. This was put into motion many years ago –AARST added Vapor Intrusion to its repertoire around 2014, started pursuing ISO 17024 around 2015, added QA requirements in 2014, OM&M in 2015. These things were mentioned in various issues of the Radon Reporter.

There was a committee formed sometime around 2014 to make a new single family home radon mitigation standard as an ANSI-AARST standard. There were 33 people, plus Spruce co-owner Dave Kapturowski as chair, on the committee writing SGM-SF-2017. The breakdown of affiliations has always troubled me. There were 7 HUD people (and no disrespect to them, but I doubt any had hands-on radon mitigation experience). There were 15 government people total, including HUD, EPA and state radon reps. And 10 people specifically as radon reps, but when you take off government people, only 7 of the 33 total were designated to protect radon’s interests.

But also, this committee had 16 VI representatives (or 14 – 2 EPA members were not specified VI or Rn but were among the VI people). Anyone would expect a higher level than minimum requirements, based on the number of both government and VI people. This is why the standard has so many new and cumbersome requirements – desirable and needed for VI but not for radon.

I do acknowledge the time and efforts made by people who are AARST volunteers, on the board and on the committees as well as for NRPP. This work requires a significant amount of time and most people are highly invested in their work. Many have been involved with AARST in various positions for decades, and it is understandable that they would be offended to have their work product criticized.

But public comments on standards is by its nature a form of criticism of the standards. When SGM-SF-2017 was being written and issued, it was required to be used nowhere, and got little attention. But the ANSI-AARST standards now have the force of law and are enforced with fines and threats of losing one's license in some states, and the same is planned for all states. So everyone should be reviewing each word carefully and not be inhibited from making comments/objections/suggestions, and AARST should be receptive towards making changes to requirements that people who are using the standard in the real world have found to be problematic.

Maybe this is a great example of why there should be term limits/time limits on people's service, and limits on the number of employees or volunteers from each company being involved in AARST. It is unfair that only very few companies bear the burden of AARST work, and on the other hand, unfair that only a few are making the decisions and setting the direction for the entire radon industry. And we, the radon community, have no idea how many people are involved on all the various committees, since only the chairs are listed, but I think some companies are sacrificing significant manhours to AARST while others are left out. I think making this transparent, with all committee meeting minutes published, would help us truly appreciate the work of AARST.

Hopefully Dallas can commit to making these administrative changes, and that the AARST, NRPP and the Standards Consortium will be a partner with radon professionals instead of an adversary that uses policies and procedures to ignore valid complaints and concerns.

Could you summarize your findings Ryan?

Here is an excerpt about the Change Request process. It looks like AARST gets 13 months to respond, by which time everyone that objects to active alarms will give up. Or go out of business.

BYLAWS OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF
Annex E
Continuous Maintenance Procedures
CONTINUOUS MAINTENANCE OF STANDARDS

E-1 Change proposals may be submitted at any time by the public using the procedures indicated in the published standard or as otherwise published by the ESC.
*Substantive changes to a document or portions thereof that are processed under the continuous maintenance option shall undergo the same due process procedures as revisions under periodic maintenance, in addition to the procedures in Article 7 and this Annex E.

E-2 Processing Change Proposals
*Staff shall forward proposed changes received to the Chair of the subcommittee responsible for the document's content, action and response. The Chair or supporting staff shall communicate with the proposer as needed to clarify the intent of the proposal.

E-2.1 Responding to the Proposer
*The Chair or staff committee responder shall draft a recommended response, including any potential changes to the standard and submit it to the subcommittee. Options for
subcommittee responses are limited to:
a) proposed change accepted for public review without modification;
b) proposed change accepted for public review with modification;
c) proposed change accepted for further study; and
d) proposed change rejected.
E-2.1.1 The response shall provide reasons for any recommendation other than option a) “accepted for public review without modification.”
E-2.1.2 Option c) “proposed change accepted for further study” shall not be used unless the further study can be completed within 7 months of approval of the option. Upon
completion of the further study, the subcommittee shall approve response option a,
b, or d above.
E-2.1.3 The Chair shall ensure that the approved committee response is conveyed to the proposer within thirteen months of receipt of the proposed change.